Books like the world according to garp5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() Largely it was the sexual content that people once found shocking in Irving's novel. I'd been disturbed earlier because it addressed serious human issues differently from much of the latter twentieth-century literature I'd become comfortable with. It had seemed sensationalist, cruelly laughing about tragic lives, and arbitrarily, by turns, both supporting and mocking feminism and other progressive causes.īut I had been very young then and when I re-read Garp, with a few more years behind me, I found it was none of those things. And there is no greater evidence for it on his side than in his breakthrough 1976 novel, The World According to Garp.Īs I've outlined elsewhere (see the John Irving commentary), I had indeed been appalled-but not in a good way-by that novel when I'd first read it. Once you get over the shock of discovering literary icon Irving and horrormeister King are mutual admirers, you might realize the truth of Irving's statement. You can find online a video of John Irving discussing how both he and Stephen King have striven not to please, but to appall. ![]()
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